He does so under extreme controversy, given that the Castro brothers still rule the island nation with an authoritarian grip.

After Obama's arrival, he participated in a wreath-laying ceremony in Revolution Square, the site of large Communist Party rallies. The Square is also flanked by enormous “heroes” of the bloody Cuban Revolution.

One of those massive, building-sized iron murals is of Che Guevara.

Image Credit: Getty Images

The distinct history of U.S. Presidents taking photos beside dictators from other countries makes this photo is no less troubling.

Here is an historical account of why the White House should not have allowed this photograph to be taken.

Hatred is the central element of our struggle! Hatred that is intransigent...hatred so violent that it propels a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him violent and cold- blooded killing machine...We reject any peaceful approach. Violence is inevitable. To establish Socialism rivers of blood must flow! The imperialist enemy must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves. Thus we’ll destroy him! These hyenas are fit only for extermination.

Che coldly described one of his killings in his own diary:

In January 1957, as his diary from the Sierra Maestra indicates, Guevara shot Eutimio Guerra because he suspected him of passing on information: “I ended the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right side of his brain.... His belongings were now mine.”

In the early years of the Cuban Revolution, Castro put Che in charge of “labor camps,” which morphed into full-fledged concentration camps.

From 1959 to 1960, the new government carried out summary executions of at least 1,118 people by firing squad. Che Guevara himself presided over the notorious La Cabaña prison, where hundreds of the executions took place. The Cuban revolution under the direction of Guevara also saw the rise of forced labor camps which gave way a few years later to full-scale concentration camps. These were filled with dissidents, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Afro-Cuban priests, and anyone else who had committed “crimes” against the new moral revolution.

SOURCE: Thor Halvorssen, President of the Human Rights Foundation, writing in the Huffington Post

Later concentration camps in Cuba were modeled after Che's original plan. Here is one historian's description of Che's model:

[Che's] camp was the precursor to the eventual systematic confinement... of dissidents, homosexuals, AIDS victims, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Afro-Cuban priests, and other such scum, under the banner of Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción, or Military Units to Help Production. Herded into buses and trucks, the “unfit” would be transported at gunpoint into concentration camps organized on the Guanahacabibes mold. Some would never return; others would be raped, beaten, or mutilated; and most would be traumatized for life.

3. Che Guevara wanted to nuke the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Image Credit: AGENCIA ESTADO/AFP/Getty Images

During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Guevara favored engaging in nuclear war to “build a better world.” After the crisis was averted he lamented Soviet inaction, stating that if the missiles had been under Cuban control, he would have fired them. “If the rockets had remained, we would have used them all and directed them against the very heart of the United States, including New York, in our defense against aggression.”

In his own words, Che was enamored with making the West “atomic victims” of socialism.

“We must keep our hatred alive and fan it to paroxysm! The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!”

SOURCE: Thor Halvorssen, President of the Human Rights Foundation, writing in the Huffington Post

4. According to historians, Che Guevara wanted to commit acts of mass terror that would have killed countless Americans.

Image Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Castro’s agents had targeted Macy’s, Gimbels, Bloomingdales, and Manhattan’s Grand Central Station with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT. The holocaust was set for detonation the following week, on the day after Thanksgiving.

A little perspective: For their March 2004 Madrid subway blasts, all 10 of them, that killed and maimed almost 2,000 people, al-Qaeda used a grand total of 100 kilos of TNT. Castro and Che’s agents planned to set off five times that explosive power in the three biggest department stores on earth, all packed to suffocation and pulsing with holiday cheer on the year’s biggest shopping day. Macy’s get’s 50,000 shoppers that one day. Thousands of New Yorkers, including women and children—actually, given the date and targets, probably mostly women and children—were to be incinerated and entombed.

“Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates...instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service...Instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service.”